Based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo with musicians who perform a musical style known as shaʿbi, this article unravels the complex role that the state-affiliated Musicians’ Syndicate plays in musicians’ working lives in order to investigate the contradictions of state control over music in Egypt. Focusing on moments of encounter between musicians and Syndicate officials, I consider why my interlocutors’ time was split between evading the Syndicate and its restrictions, and embracing the Syndicate by calling for it to implement harsher interventions. Doing so not only sheds light on the reality of cultural production in an authoritarian state, but also prompts a broader reconsideration of scholarly approaches to popular music censorship, requiring us to move beyond dichotomies of ‘state vs. society,’ ‘censors vs. censored,’ and ‘resistors vs. oppressors’ that have tended to dominate scholarship on music censorship.

The most sensational event of the year 609 in Rome was the conversion of a unique pagan temple, the Pantheon, into a church dedicated to ‘blessed Mary ever virgin and all the martyrs’. The conversion required the permission of the emperor, a lustration, deposition of contact relics and the celebration of Mass. The chant formulary for a dedication Mass, beginning with the introit Terribilis est, is first associated with the anniversary (13 May) of this event. I believe that it was composed by the papal schola cantorum specifically for the rededication of the Pantheon. This dating has implications for the history of Western liturgical chant. The noted chant scholar James McKinnon claimed that such a ‘properised’ chant formulary was characteristic of a project undertaken by the schola in the late seventh century to reorganise the entire chant repertoire. If the Terribilis est formulary can be credibly dated more than a half century earlier, this scenario would appear questionable.

The recent polycrises of COVID-19, economic recession, and energy price increases have reinforced the critical importance of energy services – such as heating, information and communications technology, and refrigeration – to everyday societal functioning. Compromising access to these energy services, or energy poverty, limits social and economic development affecting education, health, and social participation. Energy poverty is impacted by climate change and climate-related policies – however, this nexus has been marginalised within social policy. We critically review literature at the intersection of climate change and energy poverty identifying policy approaches, tensions, and solutions of relevance for social policy. While tensions exist between efforts to mitigate climate change and energy poverty, climate-friendly mitigation of energy poverty requires better integration of social perspectives to disrupt current technical biases, recognising the characteristics and needs of individuals in energy poverty, and holistic governance approaches, especially involving the health and housing sectors.